It's funny you call them weird and floaty... imagine what someone younger would say of the originals. Blobby and jagged? I think your time period and nostalgia is coloring your opinion, which is pretty normal.


They all look ANCIENT compared to modern standards. Your nostalgia and the time period you have been playing games is coloring your outlook. If she wants those classics to be played by a modern audience and be preserved in better shape a remake totally makes sense.

Shit man even I have a hard time playing the two sequels, they've aged so badly. The original pixel art is kind of timeless I agree, but only if you grew up with it.

Yeah, you're right there. But this is the point in the discussion where I'd drag out black and white movies.

I wasn't alive in the period of black and white film, yet I can appreciate a well made and interesting black and white movie. I think a quality game will always triumph over dated technology.

Unless you are talking to a COD obsessed 13 year old, and then you may as well not even bother.

There's a difference there honestly. Black and white movies never bother me at all, nor do lacking special effects. In games though, stuff like GK3's horrid polygons and cumbersome mechanics certainly do hinder the experience.

It's not a great comparison.

I don't know if you've played GK3 and I don't want to spoil it, but it's kinda hard to introduce the series to a new audience if the story continues where it left off.

Yeah, to be sold to people like you or me who have nostalgia for this stuff. Just because people can buy the games doesn't mean they will. Some new gamers will pick up the series, but that's just a tiny minority of the people who would enjoy GK. Regardless of what we think about the graphics, they are a very hard sell to people who are not used to pixelated mess. I've even heard of several people complaining they can't make out what the pictures are supposed to represent when they look at old, scanned background art like GK1 and MI2.

Nah, it's not that uncommon for people to start watching TV shows from the third season onwards, for example. The storylines of GK games are quite self-contained (I played 3 before 2 and it wasn't a problem at all), and if/when Grace comes back, it's not so hard to recap her and Gabe's complicated history in one or two well-written dialogues.

And yes, you people are probably right in what you say. But I don't want you to be right, dammit.

Wow, I feel sorry for those people. I guess our brains are just trained to see beauty in pixels. I still load up the old AGI games and marvel at the scenery. I can still remember when they were cutting edge technology.
But do you like Point & click adventure games in general? Have you played any of the old sierra or lucas arts games? GK is one of the finest examples of the genre and if you like adventure games then you are doing yourself a disservice not buying them.

Great! Gabriel Knight is essentially a more adult Broken Sword (not adult as in "more sex", but adult as in "more mature storylines / themes").
Yes. And in GK1 and GK3, Gabriel is voiced by none other than Tim Larger-Than-Life Curry.
They're hard to compare. GK has less humour (though it's not entirely without it) and a much darker and more serious story. Gameplay is largely similar.

Well they don't really have any humor, so they are quite different to Schafer's games, or Beneath a steel sky. Yes they all have voice acting. The first game stars Tim Curry and Mark Hamil too.

What sets it apart for me is the writing and detailed setting. Every scene you enter has a thousand different hotspots each with detailed and interesting descriptions. The dialogues are interesting. The puzzles are challenging. The overall story is very cool. The setting in New Orleans is amazing.

I've always thought of Broken Sword as a "poor man's Gabriel Knight". Broken Sword has obviously been heavily been influenced by GK, but IMO never got to the same level.

I wouldn't say the GK games have no humor. They just aren't comedies, and the humor is dryer.

It's in the writing. GK is as good as the Monkey Islands, but it's horror/drama instead of comedy.
Not as good. GK's writing still goes unbeaten.

Theres humour just not slapstick

I personally call it "Gabriel Knight for kids", but thought that wouldn't be very persuasive in this context :)

Obviously its up to you, but as you can tell by our persistence, we really believe a fan of adventure games would really be missing out if they skip GK.

You could always check out a long play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WULkhdQmJQw to get a feel for the game. Although they are never the same as playing it yourself.

There's a different kind of focus, I think. Broken Sword feels more like a comic book or continental European cartoon series, vaguely like Tintin. Gabriel Knight feels more like a novel. Even the nature of the protagonists' comments reflects this; George rarely says much more than a one-liner whereas Gabriel will often expand on things at length. They both have this falling-over-themselves-to-be-funny thing going on, but George's is more goofy whereas Gabriel's is more cynical.

I don't think either one is any more mature than the other, since Broken Sword is like a European comic series whereas Gabriel Knight is like an American pulp fiction series - two things that can be for kids, but are also enjoyed by teens and adults. They're both relatively simplistic in terms of story and character motivation, yet both have lots of twists and turns that'd throw off younger children. They both revel in somewhat immature stereotyping, too.